Thursday, 21 May 2015

Two Rules I've Learnt

As any writer/aspiring author or indie author will tell you it is hard work trying to write and then to edit your own work. I have had a blessed life were it concerns my writing. I have had friends who have helped and was published by a great small publisher fairly early on. Problem was life wanted to throw a spanner or five at me and they all hit me one after the other. So I gave up on my dreams. I pulled my work from the publisher, feeling bad that I could not produce work worthy and I had no energy left to help market my work etc. I stopped writing for basically a year. I stopped everything to take care of my family.

These last few month however I have been trying to get back into writing, thanks to the encouragement of my friends. It has been a learning curve. Due to not being able to give a firm time commitment I have been sharing my work on wattpad. Unfortunately in an effort to just get work up i realise that some of my work had been grossly unedited (I know I want to smack me too) and now that i've had 1000 readers reading that story I feel like an idiot.

Rule Number 1. Always aim to post edited work (even if it is self -edited) to the highest standard.
Now this is something I had always in the past done (even when I edited my own work in a not so professional way eek.) So why did I forget this rule, this time around? I don't know if it was panic, if I just thought my work was so flawless (God I hope not) or maybe my brain had checked out for a while.

So yeah, I have spent this last week editing 18 chapters non-stop. Well deserved punishment, let me tell you. I can't promise that you (the reader) won't find mistakes but I truly hope that they are minimal and that my work passes for something readable (If not please, oh pretty please let me know!) I promise that i won't take constructive criticism to heart, though if you want a character to do something that fundamentally goes against the nature of the story then I'll have to politely reject your input (please don't hate me).

Ok so now is the time to come to the second thing I have learnt since returning.

Rule Number 2. Know what tense you are using. Yep, i've made this mistake a bit lately. I am lost between tenses. I know that my story is in first person but sometimes it boggles me as to when is it something happening right there and then or what if it happened an hour or a day ago. Ugh, it is driving me nuts. I am at almost constant war with myself. It is as though I am never going to win. Truthfully I am at lost at times. So, again you (the reader) will most likely come across work in which I have displayed on Wattpad and for that I will apologise now. Even I can admit that I relied on others to pick these things up for me (I know, how dare I be so complacent. Even I am shocked to learn this about myself.)

Anyway, those are just two of the many things I am learning or relearning. It is interesting to see how far indie authors, writers and publishing has come since I withdrew from it. I am happy to be back and chipping away at different stories while learning to perfect my art.

So I'm also going to share a few links for those of you interested. They include my twitter (I don't just pimp my work, I often chat and post really random crap on there too). There is linkedin (my professional looking showcase of my work hehe) I'll throw in my wattpad (because ideally i want you guys to read my work and fingers crossed, I want you to enjoy it.) And for fun why not instagram too. (check out my random pics, mainly of my dogs, drinks and other stuff that takes my fancy)